An increasingly notorious prankster from west Cornwall has drawn the ire of residents, once again, this time by suggesting that people need not dress-up for Halloween, because they were “already playing their parts so well, and creating the kind of nightmarish world which they so vibrantly depict every October 31st – without even the slightest sense of irony.”

Devon and Cornwall Constabulary – themselves implicated in the leaflet as “Masonic agents” – have warned people not to open any envelopes which appear to come from a group called Introfinity, or the Academy of Misfits, as the material inside is likely to cause offence.

Sergeant Kenneth Green, who has had to deal with the group’s antics on numerous prior occasions, claims that while many people may have been involved in this latest stunt, they were all “acting under the influence of just one man – their leader, Jay Sawyer.”

It’s not yet known how many leaflets were sent out by the group, or have yet to be delivered, but a spokesperson for the Royal Mail suggested that up to 70% of households in the south west may have been targeted.

Apparently included with the leaflet are various pocket-sized cards, with titles such as ‘A Misfit’s Guide to Living Among the Dead’ and ’10 Ways to Confuse a Zombie’.

One resident, from Camborne, said that she found the material rather amusing, until she began to recognise her own thoughts and behaviour from one of the checklists.

She said: “I was chuckling to myself, at first, as I read about how to protect myself from zombies. But then my jaw began to drop as I realised that, according to the card, I AM one!”

There have also been mixed reactions from Christians in the area, who broadly support the group’s advice to abstain from Halloween celebrations, but strongly reject the inference that they themselves had been ‘zombified’ by the clergy.

Among the scriptures quoted in the offending leaflet is Luke 9:59,60 – which describes Jesus inviting a man to follow him. However, the man requests that he first go and bury his dead father. To which Jesus replies: “Let the dead bury their own dead.”

Sawyer himself – who recently disrupted church services in Cornwall with Metallica’s ‘Holier Than Thou’ – insists that there’s a strong spiritual message behind the humour.

In a telephone interview, he claimed that Hollywood had hijacked certain concepts and realities, and presented them to the world as fiction.

He said: “Zombies and vampires are very real, and what they feed off is the energy of the living. A zombie, for example, is defined as a reanimated corpse or human being who is controlled by someone else’s use of magic – which also happens to describe the world in which we live today. But most people are too close, too involved, too ‘spellbound’ and hypnotized by the illusion, by the ‘trick’, to actually see beyond it. Only outsiders and misfits have any real inkling of what’s going on, and our numbers are increasing exponentially.”

Sawyer went on to describe a coming battle, between the forces of light and darkness, in which everyone would have a role to play.

“It’s not about killing,” he said, “but rather the breaking of a spell. And the power to do that resides within each of us – for we are all magicians, at the end of the day.”